Smart and Sustainable Built Environment

The world has never been exposed to such a paradigm shift prior to the emerging industry 4.0 revolution – the governing foundations for shaping and delivering progressive changes for addressing issues embracing Society, Knowledge, Economy, and People. Scientific advances and innovative technologies in Architecture, Engineering, Construction are key factors in this process, the tenets of which can help the countries move towards developing smarter, and more sustainable communities. In this respect, the nine pillars supporting Industry 4.0 are widely accepted by the research and practice communities to include: the integration of Virtual/Augmented / Mixed Reality (XR=VR/AR/MR); where mainstream Building Information Management in particular is seen as a vehicle for addressing such issues as industry fragmentation, value-driven solutions, decision making, client engagement, and design/process flow to name but a few. Advanced Simulation, Computer Vision, Internet of Things (IoT), Blockchain, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and Linked Data all provide immense opportunities for dealing with these challenges; more importantly perhaps, provide real tangible (evidenced-based) innovative solutions that until now, have never been possible before. These technologies are perceived as the ‘true’ enablers of future practice. Exemplars from other industries such as automotive, aerospace and oil and gas have provided showcase solutions using advanced technologies. However, until only relatively recently, AEC has only just started to recognise terms such as “golden key” and “golden thread” as part of BIM processes and workflows.